If you have been the parent of a kid older than 2 or 3, you probably have experienced the thing where the kid lies down on the floor and doesn’t want to do anything.
It usually happens as you’re trying to get them ready for school/day care or when they’ve had a bad sleep night. They’re tired and frustrated and revert to a state where they not only don’t want to remember how to put on socks, they won’t even stand upright. It’s incredibly frustrating for the parent, but sometimes, if I’m not going crazy at that moment, I try to imagine how frustrating that moment is for the kid. Their emotional range hasn’t caught up with their inability to process certain kinds of stress and they just turn baby.
They flop on their back and, like the turtle, can’t seem to right themselves without help. So they wail and cry or kick or get mad at you when you do try to help and basically nobody’s happy. It sucks, to the BIG TIME.
I’ve experienced that a lot on the parental side lately in the months since our sleep schedule changed, but I also have finally had time off enough this week to realize that I’ve been doing some of that myself.
The last few months I’ve been the upended turtle, flapping around, but not really doing anything, expecting someone to help right me and just sort of letting out these little weak turtle bleats.
They go, “Behhhhh. Behhhh.”
It sounds fucking disgusting and the worst part of hearing it is knowing it’s coming out of my own turtle mouth.
So that’s what I’m working on right now. Trying not to feel so stuck and overturned and waiting for something to happen and going “Behhhh” and having one sock on and the other sock across the room because I flung it over there in frustration. Things feel like they’re not moving at all, at least relative to all the movement in the world, but then I have to remind myself that I’m the turtle, the one on its back, the one that’s not moving.
And that’s what needs fixing.
Behhhh.
I’m on a little four-day weekend for Thanksgiving, but work continues and there’s been a lot of writing still going on there.
The new stuff is:
I did a pretty sizable holiday tech gift guide for last Sunday’s newspaper. This year it was focused on gaming, led by Nintendo’s Wii U. I don’t have a lot to say about the Wii U itself. For the first time since maybe the GameCube (including portables), Nintendo didn’t sent a review unit to try out ahead of the launch, which is a little weird, so my only hands-on with the device was in a little trailer the company brought into town. I’m not buying one myself because, frankly, there are lots of other games to review that I don’t have time to get to and I think, based on my limited time with the demo and what I’ve been reading from reviewers who did get hardware, Nintendo has released a product that wasn’t ready for retail. We’ll see how it’s faring after the holidays.
I also did a tech gift guide, as I do every year, for Television Without Pity. It’s more of a photo gallery, with text by me, but not focused just on video games.
One thing I’ll add to both of those guides: at the time I wrote them, only four of the five episodes of The Walking Dead: The Video Game were out. Since then, I played the last episode of the first season and I can only recommend it even more. It made me cry, it broke my heart, it’s an absolutely high-water mark in video game narrative and character work. Such a great accomplishment.
The day I did that interview, Warren Spector was kind enough to invite me to his house(s) to see some of his amazing collection of artwork, movie geek wares and Disney stuff. What I learned is that if Warren Spector ever invites you to his house to see any of his collections, you go, no matter what. It was inspiring and very cool.
Lots of strangeness and change and tension in some areas and then all of a sudden these amazing moments of grace and clarity and reenergizing.
I don’t know what to make of it all, so I won’t even try, but for a lot of this year I’ve felt like things have just been in this weird, boring, waiting lull, me waiting for things to happen or for things to present themselves instead of chasing or working toward them. These last few weeks have been the opposite of that with permanent change going on all around and me asking myself, “Well, are you going to do something or just watch?”
Mostly, I just watch.
But I also did a lot recently, a lot more than usual. I reached out to a few people I haven’t talked to in a while. I finished an archive/migration project for a new website that took me so much longer than I was expecting, but damned if it isn’t done now. I spoke to a group of mom bloggers and was able to Skype in my writing partner for a session that was supposed to only be about 20 minutes, but lasted much longer and really inspired and reinvigorated my energy levels for something that has been a long-term struggle.
And, weirdly, I volunteered myself to go to a (totally hypothetical) plastic surgery consultation, which I think honestly may be the bravest thing I’ve done in a while (more on that in a minute).
My daughters, who in recent weeks have been behaving like little, possessed zoo animals have turned a corner and are starting to behave like the sweet girls that I remember from before the new school year hours made them into cranky kids.
So, strange times lately, but I’m actually kind of excited about the rest of the year and hoping to take a few more risks after what’s felt like almost a full year of stasis with only the occasional curveball (like going to New York City or restarting an old project I hope to help debut before 2013).
A few days later… I wrote the above almost a week ago and since then, the 2012 presidential election happened, I went to Wurstfest and had another week just like what I describe above.
The holidays are on us like a loose freight train and, weirdly, I’m not stressed about it in the “gotta get stuff done” sense, but more in the looking back and wondering how so much time passed so quickly from summer till now. Outside of work, I don’t feel like I’ve gotten much done at all even though I feel busy all the time.
We’ve been having a hard time with a few things like figuring out how to deal with two kids 5 and under who are angels half the time and tantrum machines at other times.
Work is still in major transition with a lot of things up in the air right now.
And due mostly to lack of sleep (caused by the above-mentioned girls who have also added waking up at 5 a.m. for no reason to the mix), I’ve had a really hard time staying up late enough to write anything, or being clear-headed enough to even have the energy to get myself to the keyboard. And of course, that leads to a self-loathing cycle of feeling like I should be doing more even though I know I don’t have the energy or the right mindset.
Really frustrating.
So instead of more whining, I’ll try to focus on some positives.
I’m working with my brother on something I’m excited about. I’m working with some old friends I used to work with in the Latino Comedy Project on a comedy thing for next year that we’re very excited about. And I’m working with a writing partner on the ongoing thing, which is still slow in progressing, but is still happening.
I don’t trust myself to work on stuff along right now outside of the usual freelance stuff because mentally I’m just not motivated right now. If something isn’t assigned to me or given a deadline or pushed along in some small way by someone I’m working with, I probably won’t do it And that’s frustrating too. Wait, positive! This was supposed to be the bright side.
OK, here’s this. I feel like the only place I’ve been really productive the last few weeks is at work (SEE ALSO: deadlines, teamwork, stuff assigned to me). I’ve written a lot of stuff, it feels like, but only there.
There was a Digital Savant column I was pretty happy with about how to spot online fakers and scammers, which I hope came in handy as the election craziness was ramping up (and which is an issue now that holiday shopping is in season).
Speaking of that, I did a column that runs in Monday’s paper about what’s new this year in online shopping. I tried to do a story like that a year or two ago and it didn’t seem like a lot had changed, at least not enough to warrant a big article. This year, I do feel like there are some new trends that are just starting to take off, so the piece is a roundup of those new shifts.
I had some hands-on time with Windows 8 and the Surface tablet (neither of which Microsoft was able to provide review units for, not that I’m bitter). I don’t think I held anything back in that write-up, but I’ll that for myself, I don’t really like using Windows 8 on a computer with a keyboard and mouse. It doesn’t seem built for that, and I don’t plan to go through the trouble to upgrade my PC (or my Boot Camp on Mac) to Windows 8 anytime soon.
And then there was the nose job story. We got pitched an item about this 3D plastic surgery image and both my (former) editor and I thought it would be fun, interesting story. Then, at one point, as we were trying to figure out if the story could lead the section and if we would have enough artwork to go with it, I suggested, “Maybe I should do the imagine and we could use those photos.”
That was when the story went from a pretty standard thing to me standing in an office with my face being swabbed and put in front of a machine to have my nose critiqued.
Dr. Jennifer Walden, a plastic surgeon, checks out the old Gallaga beak. Photo by Deborah Cannon / Austin American-Statesman
The trick to doing a story like that if you have even an ounce of shame and vanity is to have a deadline the same day as the office visit. When I got there, our photographer said she didn’t think she could do that and I told her that at that point, I had no choice; there was no way to back out with my deadline looming.
And that’s how I’m able to trick myself into doing things I would never, ever want to do otherwise — having my nose the focus of the front of the Life & Arts section on a Monday. I’m too numb about it to even be horrified at this point.
I’m sure there’s lot more I’m not thinking of at the moment, but those are the high/low lights. I’m really trying to get my energy back up and not end the year in the doldrums. I’m going to try to get to bed earlier and to stop stressing about the writing so much. It’ll happen when it needs to happen, I really hope.
I have some photos I want to post, but I’ll save those for a separate blog entry. If you can’t wait, you can probably see most of them over here on the Flickr or on my new Instagram profile page. For now, here’s one I really like that I took last week at Wurstfest:
I had a whole post planned out, but I had a sudden thought that I have to share before I go into all that.
I live in a neighborhood/housing area where a lot of people have turned their garages into second living areas. They’ve mounted a TV on the wall, put a couch up in there and instead of parking their car or giant truck in there, like you would in a garage, they sit out there in the evenings and watch baseball games or boxing or presidential debates or whatever the Hell.
It was one or two houses when we first moved here, and over the years it’s become A Thing, with probably about a dozen nearby, including our neighbors right across the street.
I’ve been trying to articulate for a while — years, honestly — why this would even bother me. And for a long time, I thought it was because I was a little jealous. Why can’t I watch TV in my cat-litter-smelling, funky, dirty, humid garage like these Manly Men who live near me? Why do we have to have half our garage full of bins and junk and the other half occupied by a car? Why can’t I have a damn man cave (or a cave that opens up into direct sunlight and is well-ventilated as caves are, I guess).
Then I realized, it’s not that I’m jealous, it’s that I’m embarrassed. When I go outside, I feel like I’m walking past a stranger’s living room as they watch whatever they watch. Which, to me, is kind of mortifying. I barely like people in my own house to know what I’m watching on TV, much less total strangers walking by on the street.
I hate feeling like I’m interrupting something, even when I’m not, and I really just don’t care to know what my neighbors are watching. It’s baseball 90 percent of the time, which is as boring as things get. I know I’m in the minority here. I know nobody else cares about my obsession with garage living rooms. Just let me vent a little here.
As I’ve said before, CNN seems to really like it when I pitch them weird, out-there ideas and this one hit the sweet spot between silly and relevant, I think.
What I didn’t really think about when I pitched the idea what how much work it was going to take to get the language of an actual peace treaty correct. For several days, I hit the pediawikis, researching the wording of different kinds of peace accords dating back several hundred years. The result is a hybrid of different treaty types, but I’m pretty happy with the way it turned out. It turns out I can broker peace if I really work at it!
This week’s column started out being about wearable computers (fitness sensors, sleep monitors, that sort of thing), and then ended up being about how sensors are turning our tech from bulky to wearable to completely invisible. A professor from UT’s iSchool gave me some insight that gave the column a little more weight, I thought. In it, I mention a sleep monitor that I tried out. I got it at the BlogHer conference and, seriously, if you want to look like a total dork while unconscious, try the Zeo. But it did give me some insight into how badly I was sleeping at the time and made me adjust my habits a little bit.
The SXSW story ran on the front page of the paper and the Zynga thing made some national headlines. Lots of busy time at work.
Other crazy things that happened recently:
I went to Austin City Limits Fest, which was wonderful, and I took a bunch of photos, but I want to post those separately and I’m not done editing the images, so I’ll post that sometime over the weekend.
Had my first parent-teacher conference for Lilly at her kindergarten. She’s very shy at school, not shy at home, is what it came down to. At least she’s well-mannered and behaved in the classroom, which is more than we could ask for.
I also did a creativity conference for work on design thinking that was really great and forced me to tackle problems and ideas in a different way. Honestly, I can’t even tell you what changed because I’m still figuring it out, but I had a few “A-ha” moments that I need to work through and integrate into my life a bit more.
My editor, who I mention a lot in talking about my stories and columns, has taken a job at UT-Austin and next week will be her last in our office. I’m sort of numbing my brain to not have to think about it because as awesome as it is for her, I can’t even imagine doing my job without her guidance and great ideas, so it’s going to be an adjustment, to put it mildly.
And that’s it. I’ve had lots to think about and process and reflect on, but to be quite honest, the changing weather has just made me very sleepy and most nights I just want to crawl into bed instead of staying up late and writing. Hoping I catch up on sleep soon and get a second wind before winter freezes me all up.
I’ve been promising this story of woe and ridiculousness in regards to my car and here it finally is.
First, though, quickly, let me just update you on the stuff from work this week.
The Monday Digital Savant column was about apps that can help you get to and get around Austin City Limits Festival, which I will be attending this weekend. Some Austinites act like they’re totally so over the fest, and yet it sells out every year and people seem to manage to have a good time despite all the sighs and grumbling. I plan to have a good time and eat one or five of these Tiffblitzes. Please tell my family I love them when I die of sugar.
This whole nightmare started on my way to work one Thursday evening in early August. I got pulled over on the highway for a law I didn’t even know existed. I was in the right lane and a police had pulled someone over, lights flashing. I would normally change lanes in a situation like this, but there was traffic, so I stayed in the right lane and was extra careful passing.
A few minutes later, the same police officer pulled me over and told me that it was a fairly new law, about three years old, that you have to either change lanes or slow down 20 miles per hour in that situation.
OK. Fine. Consider me duly warned.
Except I also had an expired inspection sticker, which I had completely lost track of in another universe I wasn’t even connected to anymore (I didn’t say that out loud. Best not to.). So, all right, I probably deserve a ticket for that. But the part about the passing lane thing was a lot less clear and even the officer couldn’t remember what to cite on the ticket. (He was, it sounded like, winging it.)
Double ticket. He was nice enough and told me that if I got the inspection taken care of soon, it would be dismissed, but he had no idea what I was in store for on the other part. I drove home and planned to take care of everything on the weekend when I’d have time to get the car inspected; I wasn’t planning to do much driving before then.
And then I had my car accident.
The accident (or, “Look FORWARD when you drive”)
It was on Saturday, the same day I was planning to wait until the kids took a nap to go get my car inspected while my wife watched them.
That morning, I took the kids to the library while she ran errands. We were having a great time.
On the way back home, right in front of the New Braunfels Police station, there was a horrible accident. There were two motorcycles laid out and a truck. It did not look good and I was pretty sure, just from the number of ambulances and police cars, and the tarps on the ground, that somebody must have died.
The girls in the backseat were staring at the sirens and I suddenly got scared that they were going to see something horrible as we passed slowly next to the scene. The road had been reduced to one lane and the line was backed up. We were going very slow, stop and go, stop and go, not even two or three miles per hour.
I turned to the backseat to see what the girls were doing. I turned to the left to see what they could see of the accident. I turned back to the girls again. And then I turned forward and saw that I was heading, very slowly, right into the truck in front of us.
There was a bump and a lurch as I hit the brake, but we barely felt a thing. We did hit the truck, though. Just really slowly.
We pulled off to the side, as did the truck in front of us and I got out to see the damage. It looked like the photo at the top of this blog entry.
Here’s what the back of the truck I hit looked like:
Why no damage, Tacoma? WHY NO!?!?
The guy in front of me was an older gent. It turned out he’s retired military, just like my dad, and the guy could not have been nicer. He kept asking me about my girls and if they were OK and did not even act a tiny bit put out that some random person hit him from behind and now all of a sudden his time was being wasted on insurance bullshit when his truck was barely even touched.
He said he was on his way home from a grocery run and I imagined him sitting at home on the couch with a cold beer instead out of in the hot sun with me while my daughters sat patiently in the air conditioning waiting to go home. He did not even act like it was a thing, and I was incredibly lucky the guy was so cool about it.
A police officer saw our (my) wreckage told us that they had some other stuff to deal with (“Yes! We’re sorry, please go see to that, sorry!”), so for us to both go pull into the police station parking lot and wait.
This is what the area looked like:
The guy kept saying he’d never been in an accident and wasn’t sure what to do, so we took photos of each others’ insurance information and he called his insurance person while I called my wife and asked her to come pick up the kids because I didn’t know how long things would take.
It turns out these things take a long time, especially when they’re in proximity of a much more serious incident. So we waited, awkwardly. Ages later, a police officer came and told us that we could fill out an accident report since no crime had occurred and that was fine by us. We exchanged the paperwork and since my vehicle was hideous, but drivable, I went home.
I called my insurance agent’s service; the person on the line did not express any surprise that I did something so stupid and, to their credit, did not judge. While I was on hold, I Tweeted:
If I worked for the insurance company it would be hard for me not to tell some people, "It sounds like you just suck at driving."
The insurance agent told me everything was cool and asked if I wanted to take my car to the body shop that did some work on my car the previous year. That was fine. I was set to take the car in on Monday and get a rental. Problem solved, right?
Well, no. I still needed an inspection sticker (I figured they frown upon you bringing in a wreck for that) and still had a court date. But that was weeks away, no biggie, right?
Kind of a biggie
There’s a local body shop that did work on my car last year that was superb. I mean, the damn car looked brand new and the bumper issue I was having was totally resolved. I know that’s what body shops are paid to do, but I was still stunned by what great work they did. So it was a no-brainer to use them again for this job.
Funny about that…
Everything seemed great at first. They told me the job would only take a week or two and that my insurance (with deductible) would cover my car rental.
The rental, you guys. It was PIMP! I know it was only a Ford Taurus, but my car is five years old and paid off, this car was brand new and had stuff like satellite radio built in (instead of my jerry-rigged batch of wires and ugly antennas) and Bluetooth streaming.
BLUETOOTH STREAMING! Of music and stuff!
And it was a big, smooth-riding beast, much bigger than my car, but way more comfortable for my long commute.
I took the rental car to the City of Kyle, where my ticket was issued, and went to the quaint City Hall building. I was told I would need to come to the court in about a month to get the inspection thing resolved for a fee and for the driving lane issue, I’d have to pay $107 and take a defensive driving course, which involved more fees.
Two weeks later, when I called for the third time to check on my car and was told by the collision center that they needed more time, I asked, “Is the car rental still covered?”
They said it was.
“Shit, take your time!” I bellowed, singing along with a happy song in my head, “take as long as you need!”
That was probably a mistake.
Because the week before my court date, I was starting to worry. No car. No inspection sticker. The collision center told me the car rental time was up but that they would cover the difference. That didn’t seem like good news.
I began to call every day as the status of my car kept slipping. The woman I was talking to, I think, was starting to dodge my calls.
Finally, she agreed to let me have my car back and even agreed to take the car to get the inspection done the day I was to pick it up, one day before my court date.
I checked in that morning. It still wasn’t done. I was told my car would not be ready until 5:45 that evening, right when I was supposed to be with my daughter at her dance class.
“What time do you close?” I asked.
“5:45.”
“So I have to be there at exactly…”
“Yes.”
Shit.
I took my daughter to dance class and asked the teacher if she’d be OK if I ran across the street (the collision center was not far away) to get my car. She said it was fine, though Lilly was not thrilled that I wasn’t going to be in the waiting area the whole time.
So I rushed over with my pimp rental car and waited and waited and waited until they finally brought my car out.
They forgot to do the inspection. The woman said she sent a different, probably already-inspected car, because she got confused.
I transferred the car seats, cleaned up as best I could, and moved all the rest of my stuff over to my own car. Fine, it wasn’t inspected, but I had my car back. I drove quickly back to the dance studio and waited for Lilly to finish.
Things were almost back to normal.
Not back to normal
The next morning, I went to get my car inspected on the way to work. That went fine; it only took a few minutes.
Then, about 10 minutes on the highway toward work, a bunch of warning lights in my car came on, including a signal saying something might be wrong with my brakes.
The car dealership where I get my oiled changed is on my route, so I was able to make an emergency stop there.
Half an hour later, they figured out that it was a hybrid water pump that needed replacing.
My car has about 150,000 miles on it. It’s paid off, which I love, but I’ve learned that when something needs fixing, it needs to just get fixed, no matter what the cost. This one was going to be $600, on top of the deductible I’d just paid for my wreck. So not having a car payment was not working out so well for these two or three months.
They had no idea how long the fix would take, but the estimate was looking like around three or four hours. My court date was that evening in Kyle, about 30 miles up the road toward Austin.
I called my wife and told her I was at the car dealership with a car problem.
“But what about your inspection?!” she asked.
“What? Oh… no, that’s taken care of, this is a whole other set of bullshit I’m dealing with now.”
I wondered if my car sitting for so long at the collision center may have caused the problem. It didn’t help my mood.
With some weird luck, they were able to fix my car a lot more quickly than expected. I got out of there by lunchtime and headed to work.
#NightCourt
Night court was one of the most depressing places I’ve ever been and I’ve lived in Mississippi.
It was a mix of teens, families, people who just got off work based on the uniforms they wore and random others in homogeneously bad moods. Nobody talked, everybody waited in fear, there was no, “So what are you in for?” chit-chat. Some people messed around with their phones because, you know, this is America, but there was no mirth or camaraderie. With some tweaking, it could have been The Hunger Games without weapons.
I signed in and waited for two straight hours, Tweeting about #NightCourt to keep myself awake.
Going to a court of law at night not as hilarious as my childhood TV viewing led me to believe.
My case was dismissed, but I still have to do defense driving. I plan to do it online, very soon, but it’s a loose thread I’m still dealing with.
And then this other stuff happened:
I got charged for the rental car after all, almost $100. It turns out it was because Hertz thought I left a huge mess (I did not) and didn’t put enough gas in the car (I actually put more than what they gave it to me with and never agreed to pay for gas). But the Hertz Twitter account had my back and helped get that charge reversed.
I noticed later that the hood of my car was sitting unevenly. That required another trip back to the collision center where they fixed it, I shit you not, in 20 minutes.
I watched some Night Court clips on YouTube and found they were much funnier than my experiences.
I like my car and not having a car payment, but at some point in the next few months, I’ll probably end up buying a new one.
And that’s it. I hoped you enjoyed THIS TALE OF TOIL AND WOE.
I went to Winston-Salem / Wake Forest University this week, which as near as I can tell specializes in tobacco legends and beautiful campuses with sexy trees. I will tell you about that in a bit.
First, let me fill you in on what I’ve been working on the last few weeks on these, our very best Internet delivery systems.
Last week, I did a Digital Savant column explaining how to get up and running on Tumblr. Tumblr, which I have sometimes derogatoraliciously compared to Livejournal, is actually a really great, simple blog platform and if you are already a Tumblr Pro, this will probably seem pretty elementary to you.
I started a Tumblr blog a while back when we were still doing Age of Lasers and a second one I set up with just my name lay fallow for a few years, Tumbled, if you will.
So I revived it and got back in there, tickling the Tumblr until I felt satisfied I could properly discuss it. Your own satisfaction may vary.
That same week, I did a Digital Savant Micro about WordPress, the software running this here very blog thing you are just now mind-melding with. Seems like those two things would go well together, like peanut butter and … a butter knife?
You may have noticed in there that statesman.com and austin360.com have been completely redesigned. It’s part of an entire content management system upgrade we’re doing that has been the subject of lots of training and discussion in the newsroom. It’s a lot to get used to, but we’re all trying to keep our heads up through so much change this year.
We also made the transition to have our pages laid out elsewhere and the lights went out officially on our copy desk. I would talk more about this, but honestly it would just make me incredibly sad and blubbery. I’ll just say that some of these people shifted into other jobs and that’s fantastic, and other people left and that sucks so hard that every one of us working there feels it, badly.
It happens every now and then that someone will ask me in an email to go somewhere to talk (or to ask questions so that other people can talk while I nod with understanding).
Often, these conversations end abruptly when I say I can’t do it because it takes work to go somewhere, even if the talking itself is not as much work as the going. Things usually break down over travel, which I try to avoid when it involves being away from home for more than one night, or money, which is frequently not offered at all.
Sometimes, I’ll get asked what it will take to get me to go somewhere and I’ll throw out some information and then never hear back, as if the information was trapped in a bottle thrown to sea.
But maybe once a year, all the details work out and I actually go somewhere.
At one point, I wasn’t sure if this was to be a solo presentation or if I were going to moderate, but as the weeks got closer, I double checked to make sure I didn’t need to be spending many backbreaking hours in the PowerPoint salt mines (salt mines with a very bland border and text that slides in from the right) or that there was no A/V I needed to work out on my end.
This thing, it turns out, was more geared toward radio as it was a public radio station (and the generous Forsyth Education Foundation) brining me in. They were more concerned with getting decent audio than showing faces on a screen. So I did a pre-interview with the station (click here to hear me ramble about tech and kids for five minutes).
I coordinated with the other panelists over emails, putting together a list of questions and when I arrived, we went through everything again, resulting in what I thought was a really good panel covering a pretty broad set of topics, from cyberbullying to online defamation to what the future is for digital natives. You can hear and read some highlights from the panel here.
As for the trip itself — you guys! Have you been to North Carolina?! It’s totally beautiful and awesome! Everyone was super nice and the trees were all clumped together and endless and I ate shrimp and grits while two charming older people regaled me with tales of their college years and the place I stayed was a B&B in Old Salem, which is like hundreds of years old and… wow. For the fewer than 20 hours I was there, I just kept wishing I could stay longer to check out the bakeries and walk around and just experience it a little more because what I saw was great. I saw a statue of R.J. Reynolds! The Nabisco guy! (He’s not the Nabisco guy.)
I mean, check this out:
That thing pumps real water!
And this fire station probably predates actual fire!
My breakfast was a really great feast, which this photo only shows a fraction of. See that? That granola is homemade, yo!
The fun continued after the panel when my hosts took me out for drinks. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t drunk. I mean can you get drunk from two mint juleps? Oh, you can? If you’re a gigantic pussy?
Well, that’s me, I guess, because I went back to my room and started Tweeting strangely about how much I love the trees in Winston-Salem.
I'm not saying I've had a little too much to drink tonight, but I AM going to attempt to kiss every tree in Winston-Salem. TOTALLY DOABLE.
I’m having fun lately — not, Oh my God, that roller coaster was insane! fun — but some satisfied fun, the kind I can allow myself when I feel like things are rolling along and I’m not somehow lagging behind.
I hit a goal on the writing project I mentioned earlier and I started working on something with my brother that we hope to roll out in a little while. We’re going through some big system/software changes at work, but this time the stuff we’re being trained on seems to me like a pretty big improvement over some of the things we’ve gotten used to and in one big way, it’ll offer me a lot more flexibility with how and where I do my job, so that’s nice.
So, I’m not doing cartwheels or anything, but I’m pretty happy. OK, I did a cartwheel. One cartwheel. Just now, I’m sorry you missed it, it was a tiny cartwheel, you shouldn’t have blinked.
Part of the fun has been settling in to a rhythm with the Digital Savant columns and the newer Micro mini-features we introduced more recently.
Photo by Kevin Berne, courtesy of UT-Texas Performing ArtsI hadn’t seen the show before we spoke, but of course I’d read all about it and listened to the infamous This American Life “Retraction” episode.
The phone interview we did was good, I thought. Daisey was generous was his time, thoughtful in his answers and only a little cagey and indirect when I asked him whether he regretted participating in “Retraction,” which is how the column ends.
What surprised me much more was seeing the actual show, more than a full week after I’d written the article. I didn’t have any obligation to review or follow up the column, so I was able to attend the show without a notebook in front of my face and to just see it as a theatergoer.
It was funnier than I was expecting. I was expecting a depressing, searing lecture on human rights abuses and that does come toward the end and sprinkled inside some pretty amusing thoughts on what it is to be a geek, an Apple Fanboy and someone suddenly thrust in the spotlight and suddenly interacting with people like Steve Wozniak.
It played to about half an audience; the night I went it had the bad luck of being scheduled at the same time as an away UT football game and the theater was on campus.
The play had some very recent updates, including mentions of a recent Chinese student labor scandal and some thoughts about the iPhone 5 launch. Daisey suggested at the end of the show (after accusing all of being complicit and not doing enough to stop Apple and Foxconn’s shoddy labor practices overseas) not that we stop buying Apple products, but that at least in the case of the iPhone 5 that maybe we should wait a few weeks. Big product launches tend to be where the worst of the working conditions take place and not rushing to be the first to own the new iPhone might relieve some of that pressure.
Judging from what pre-orders look like, it’s a message hardly anyone heard or heeded.
The Digital Savant Micros are starting to feel a little more substantial and newsy when we can make them so, like one we recently did explaining Reddit and tying it to an event that was in the news. This week, we did a Micro about how you can tell why a website’s not loading tied to last week’s GoDaddy outage. (Which actually did affect a website I own, but since that site gets single-digit traffic per day, I’m sure nobody noticed.)
Other recent stuff I wrote included a follow-up on Ken Starks, a man I wrote about two years ago, who has been having some health problems and got some much-needed support from the Linux community and, of course, a wrap-up of the iPhone 5 announcement. (And no, I’m not upgrading this time. Perfectly fine with my 4S and my wife, who is out of contract, has no interest in getting a new phone right now).
Every year I always lament the passing of summer because here in New Braunfels, that’s when all the fun stuff seems to happen (except Wurstfest. Oh, Wurstfest, you cannot get here soon enough).
This year, we went to the beach, I got to go tubing, we made plenty of trips to Schlitterbahn and it was a mild enough summer that we actually got to go outside and even got some rain, not like last year’s endless drought.
So instead of complaining that the cool weather got here too soon and that the season is behind us, I’ll just enjoy these pictures and be glad that as the girls are getting older, they’re getting to enjoy more of the summertime as they start transitioning into school every August.
Oh, one more thing. I have a story about my car that I’m going to save for next week. I would write it tonight, but something else just happened and I want to see how the story turns out tomorrow before I put it into words. But it involves a collision, a court appearance, a missing antenna and several other twists and turns.
You won’t be able to put it down! Or click off of it, or whatever.
